U.S. Imposes Tougher Sanctions on Sudan

The Clinton administration announced Tuesday that it is imposing a near-total embargo on trade with and investment in Sudan for what the State Department says is the radical Islamic government’s support of terrorism, persecution of minority religions and tolerance of the slave trade.

Under the sweeping new sanctions, announced by Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, all export-import transactions are prohibited, and U.S. companies with investments in Sudan are given 30 days to sell their stakes. The African government’s bank accounts and other financial assets in the United States are being frozen.

“We take these steps because the government of Sudan has failed to respond to repeated expressions of concern or to the imposition of lesser sanctions,” Albright said. She added that the objective is to “deprive the regime in Khartoum of the financial and material benefits of U.S. trade and investment, including investment in Sudan’s petroleum sector.”

At the same time, Albright said, the administration will consider waivers “on a case-by-case basis” to allow continued commerce in products important to the U.S. economy.

State Department spokesman James P. Rubin suggested that the government will continue to allow imports of gum arabic, a derivative of the acacia tree that is used in candy, soft drinks, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics and printing inks. Sudan accounts for more than 70% of the world’s supply of the commodity.

A senior administration official said later that waivers will be granted sparingly. But the official agreed that “the gum arabic lobby is very active.”

However, the official said it is unlikely that U.S. oil companies will be allowed to invest in Sudan. U.S. firms, including Occidental Petroleum Corp., have been considering projects there, officials said, but have not yet made investments.

Sudan was added to the State Department’s list of countries supporting global terrorism in 1993. As a result, the U.S. imposed automatic sanctions focusing on terrorism, such as a ban on trade in goods that can be used by terrorist groups. In 1995, after Sudan’s government was implicated in an attempt to assassinate Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, the United States and Egypt sought, without much success, to persuade the United Nations to impose worldwide sanctions.

The steps announced Tuesday go far beyond any U.S. sanctions now in place against Sudan.

Rubin said the U.S. is urging other nations to join in the action.

“We’d like to see the maximum amount of support for sanctions like this, because I think we recognize that, at the end of the day, the success of a sanctions regime is partially determined on the extent to which more and more countries support it,” he said. “But we believe this is important enough for us to take these unilateral, sweeping measures alone.”

Secular human rights groups and Christian organizations almost always class Sudan’s Muslim-dominated government as the world’s worst human rights offender.

The State Department, in a special report on religious persecution, said the Sudanese government forces Christians and adherents of indigenous African religions to convert to Islam under threat of death, condones a slave trade that preys on Christians and animists, and is engaged in a concerted effort to wipe out non-Muslim religions.